Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial has opened its critical campaign with a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score, giving the controversial Sam Altman drama a strong start. The film arrives at a moment for Hollywood’s relationship with Silicon Valley. Its story is drawn from one of the consequential episodes in artificial intelligence, while its production journey has become as fascinating as the events it dramatizes.

The strong reviews arrive after a winding journey through studios and one complicated corporate relationship.

Rotten Tomatoes currently lists Artificial at 91% from 11 critics, with reviews ranging from 4/5 and 5/5 scores to a B-. The early response gives the film momentum following its world premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival on October 5. Written by Simon Rich, the biographical comedy-drama centers on Sam Altman and OpenAI’s 2023 leadership crisis.

Andrew Garfield stars alongside Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever and Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati. The ensemble includes Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk and Mark Rylance as Geoffrey Hinton.

Originally an Amazon MGM project, the film was dropped during post-production. Neon acquired worldwide rights, with a December 25, 2026 theatrical release planned. That journey has given Artificial attention before audiences have seen it.

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Artificial’s distribution saga became inseparable from Amazon’s evolving relationship with OpenAI, turning the film into a test case for Hollywood’s ties to Big Tech.

In June of 2026, it was Amazon revealed that it had dropped the nearly completed Sam Altman film months after announcing a $50 billion investment in OpenAI, prompting speculation about a conflict of interest. The studio did not identify the partnership as its reason, saying only that Artificial would be better served elsewhere. 

Reports nevertheless pointed to the film’s unsympathetic portrayals of Altman and Elon Musk. Other distributors, including Netflix, A24 and Focus Features, also passed after screening it, while industry reporting suggested studios were wary of films taking aim at technology figures as Hollywood’s relationships with Big Tech grow more complicated. 

Neon ultimately acquired the film, giving Luca Guadagnino’s divisive, sans-AI project a theatrical home. Now, with critics responding positively, Artificial has something it badly needed: an early argument that the controversy surrounding its journey may not be the final word on the film itself.

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What does Artificial's Tomatometer score tell you about the upcoming release? Let us know your thoughts in the comments .